Manny Egusquiza’s head horse Sleepy is no one-trick pony. He has a second-event side hustle, and can be seen zipping through the poles and barrels at local playdays around Stephenville, Texas when he’s not out on the rodeo road doing his day job.
“I knew he’d run barrels, but didn’t pay much attention to his barrel racing skills, because I didn’t have any use for them,” said Egusquiza, who’s currently spinning for two-time world champ and fellow BFI winner Walt Woodard. “My stepdaughter, Whitley, runs him at the playdays now, and he hasn’t forgotten how to do it.
“Sleepy’s so gentle that a little girl can jump on him in his pen with no halter, and he’ll walk around until she quits kicking. As for the heading, Bubba did a very good job with him.”
Yes, Bubba Buckaloo (who won the BFI started Sleepy when he was young. Then team roper Clay Hurst and his barrel racer wife, Ivy, owned him. When we watched Manny and Walt place a close second in the average at San Angelo earlier this year after winning the short round, it wasn’t Sleepy’s first success there. Ivy made the San Angelo short round on him in the barrel racing when Sleepy—who’s 19 now—was younger.
“Belo Wiley and his son, Chase, owned Sleepy (whose registered name is Tys Sleeping Star) after the Hursts,” Manny said. “I bought Sleepy from Belo and Chase.”
The Wileys actually sent Sleepy and a couple other horses to Manny to sell in 2020. But there was something about the black he didn’t want to part with. Riding Sleepy, Egusquiza won the 2021 BFI with Kory Koontz, and has had a lot of success there and everywhere else since on the back of this horse. (And so you don’t have to wonder, Woodard won the 2008 BFI heeling for Clay Tryan.)
“Sleepy’s the reason I’m still entering,” Manny said. “It doesn’t matter what I put him up against, he pulls through. Sleepy’s good everywhere, and he’s been spot-on everywhere I take him.”
And yes, that’s sometimes the local barrel racing jackpot at the 377 Arena in Stephenville.
